It is very difficult to convince a person, even if he has already begun to study Kabbalah, that we need to connect with others. He doesn’t have any desire or need for this. On the contrary, the average person would rather get close to his neighbors and others. After all, he feels that it’s advantageous for him to maintain good relations and avoid conflicts in order to make his life safer.

But a person who has received a personal desire to discover the higher power, to discover the world and wants to know the meaning of life, becomes very individualistic. He doesn’t want to be linked with anyone, for he feels that the essential question is found within him. Therefore it’s very difficult for him to hear about connection, which seems to him like a children’s game and is incomprehensible in any form.

That’s why I am very happy that today we have succeeded in beginning to talk about this. We have come close to finding the most fundamental point. And if we will be concerned about this all the time, then all the rest will be revealed by way of it, within it, within the connection between us.

Our unity is that black point through which we pass as the barrier (Machsom) to another world, “the eye of a needle,” about which the Creator says, “Open an opening for me like the eye of a needle.” After connecting with one heart, in one desire, we are connected in one point. All of our points are connected into one point and it creates an opening like the eye of a needle. If we prepare ourselves this way, then we open a passage to the new world, then the highest level will be revealed to us, that is the first step on the spiritual ladder.

This need for connection is preparation for receiving the Torah. It’s clear that the connection will not be realized by us except with the help of the higher power. But our task is to feel the need for connection and to build a common prayer.

It’s logical that we don’t have anything to pray for, neither privately or collectively, except for the need to reach connection. And thus we discover all the positive results that we need. But if I decide by myself that I must know more, to succeed more, or even to love more, it shows my pride. It’s necessary to ask only for connection, and other than this, nothing; this will be our common prayer.

The “prayer of the many” cannot be otherwise—only about unity. And it makes no difference what comes out of this, for the results will be precisely according to the arrangement of the ladder of levels that we must climb higher and higher. We don’t establish their arrangement; rather, we only decide that we must connect more and more strongly between everyone.

This means that I don’t ask for a payoff. It will come by itself, will be discovered within the society, which is to say in the connection between us, and that we seek only this. This is a very simple truth, but it keeps slipping because our ego is renewed all the time. Again and again we are forced to return ourselves to the “prayer of the many” in which we are united as one, in one request.

And if we want to join any other requests to this, even the highest spiritual goals, like success in integral education and attracting all people to it, but we put this as our private goal, then this is incorrect. This again is the same pride that forces us to decide what the connection between us should be. Thus we build the “golden calf.”

The “golden calf” is not just the work of the person for the good of his ego. They don’t say anything at all about this in the Torah. The “golden calf” is the desire of the person to establish for himself the form of his spiritual advancement instead of simply desiring connection. The “point in the heart” gathers all the points and rises up the mountain in order to receive the Torah, the Light that Reforms. And then all the desires that are gathered at the foot of the mountain will connect to the same point and disappear into the point of connection.

But in spite of all this, a person is drawn to decide something by himself, to add some kind of private demands that are imperative for him in order to advance in service to the Creator, this is called a “golden calf.” These are very high levels, spiritual levels. The entire way explained in the Torah of how we must traverse in order to reach the completion of correction, from beginning to end, is only with the strength of the connection and not with anything else.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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